


Do You Ever Wonder How We Got Here

by lonechicken



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon-typical language, Dylan and Jax are there briefly, M/M, Other Characters Are Mentioned, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Temple of Procreation, but it's mostly just these two, they stand around and talk a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 14:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13148376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonechicken/pseuds/lonechicken
Summary: “Do you ever wonder why we’re here?”Simmons has never figured out the answer to that question, no matter how many hours he and Grif have spent debating it.And then sometimes he wonders not so much about the why, but the how — how did he end up where he is now, and whose fault it is that everything turned out this way.It’s probably Grif’s.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ketchrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ketchrey/gifts).



> My Secret Santa gift for Ketchrey! Hope you like it!
> 
> The prompt was “Grimmons or Washlina in any context”, so here’s some Grimmons in a bunch of contexts.

It’s ridiculous. It’s fucking ridiculous, that after everything they end up back in Blood Gulch. 

Grif stands up on the cliffs for half an hour, like the drama queen it is, screaming “noooooooo” while the rest of them get over it and move on. Well, sort of.

Of course they’re pissed too, Blood Gulch is the worst place in the world — in any world — and now they’re back. They travelled through time and now they’re back.

They — Sarge, Donut, and Simmons, but mostly Sarge — shoot Grif down off the cliff and Sarge holds a meeting about what to do next. He’s halfway through his speech when a tank rolls by behind him, which Simmons has to point it out because it’s a tank and they’re in a war and that seems like important information. 

And then fucking Grif, because he can never take anything seriously, can never just be on Simmons’ side, tells Sarge that Simmons is crazy. That there was no tank. That none of them saw it, and because Sarge didn’t see it either, he believes Grif of all people. Over Simmons. 

It’s too much, all of it, so Simmons leaves. 

He ends up at Blue Base. Turns out the tank was real, because of course it was, Simmons knows what he saw, and it belongs to Blue Team. Simmons paints himself blue and launches an attack on Red Base to prove his point. It gets him nowhere. Sarge holds a competition to see who will replace him, and Donut starts screening his calls. 

Eventually, Grif shows up to try to convince him to come back to Red Base, but fuck that asshole for not siding with him about the tank, so Simmons takes him prisoner. 

It sucks. Grif mouths off and marvels at the decor and ignores Simmons. Tells him he’s being a bad hostage taker and to be more authoritative, which Simmons can do goddamn it, and then when he does Grif complains about that too. And then the hole. The fucking hole Simmons uses — tries to use — as Grif’s holding cell just spits him right back out on the other side of the room.

Eventually they end up back to Red Base and for a while everything goes back to normal.

It’s then, when they’re both back at Red Base watching TV in the common area and Grif has his feet up on the table (ugh) when he says, without looking up, “Remember that time you took me prisoner?”

And Simmons says, “You mean last week? Of course I remember. It was all your fault in the first place for not telling Sarge you saw the tank too, or I wouldn’t have defected to Blue Team, and it all never would have happened.”

Grif just nods. “Yeah. That was hot.”

If Simmons had been drinking something he would have spat it out because what the fuck did Grif just say?! All he can think is thank fuck for helmets. Grif isn’t wearing his because he’s been shoving chips into his face for the last half-hour, but Simmons follows the rules, thank you very much, and keeps his armour on at all times. And thank fuck he does, because under his helmet Simmons is probably about the same shade of red as his armour. His face is on fire.

Grif just shrugs. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s a totally normal thing to say your teammate taking you prisoner was hot. Like they talk about that kind of shit all the time. 

What the fuck is Simmons supposed to do with that?

“You know,” Grif continues, “like if a hot chick took you prisoner, and was all up in your shit. It’d be hot. Like role-play. Handcuffs and all that.”

Oh God, that’s what he meant. Of course that’s what he meant. Why is Simmons’ mind in the gutter, going weird places and thinking weird things about his frie… teammate. His lazy, annoying, fatass teammate who says misleading — no. It’s fine. 

Grif’s eyes never leave the TV, and he shoves another handful of chips in his mouth. 

Simmons forces himself to follow Grif’s lead and turns back to stare at the TV too. He can’t focus at first, but they’re watching Battlestar, and pretty soon he’s caught up in pointing out logic flaws to Grif while Grif laughs and mocks the characters right back. 

Before the bag of chips disappears, Simmons demands a handful and Grif reluctantly hands it over. Simmons takes some chips and passes the bag back, and almost forgets all about the earlier awkward moment he still doesn’t entirely know what to make of or do with. So he just ignores it and they go on with their lives.


	2. Chapter 2

They get transferred to Rat’s Nest. 

Sarge is supposed to come with them, but not all of the Blues get transferred out, and Sarge refuses to leave on the principle that abandoning Blood Gulch would mean the Blues win.

So Grif is promoted to Sergeant, which would be bad enough on its own, but then he decides to sell their ammo to the other team, or more specifically to Caboose, because he’s transferred to the Blue Base they’re meant to be fighting and Grif figures he can make some money off selling army ammo to the other side. He’s going to get himself killed. He’s not careful at all and he’s going to get caught, and Simmons might talk shit about him but deep down he doesn’t want Grif to — Grif is his superior officer, and he can’t just let his superior officer get caught doing illegal activities.

They get caught anyway. Simmons wasn’t careful enough and they’re sentenced to death by firing squad.

They try to talk themselves out of it, to delay the inevitable, but unfortunately the soldiers at this outpost aren’t completely stupid and they catch on.

“You’re just delaying,” says the one who’s giving the orders. Simmons forgets his name.

“Yes that’s true,” Simmons says. “But it’s also true that you have to read us a list of charges. It’s in the Red Army Handbook, section on firing squads, subsection 2.9C. Third paragraph.”

“You are going to die a nerd,” Grif tells him. “So sad.”

“Do you want to die in the next two seconds, or do you want to die a nerd with me five minutes from now?”

Grif doesn’t say anything to that.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking… Fine, yeah, what he said, section whatever whatever.”

The soldier in charge eyes them. “I think you’re bluffing. I never read that.”

Grif rolls his entire head along with, presumably, his eyes. “Uh, did you read the Red Army handbook?”

“I… Uh… No.”

“That’s because nobody has,” Grif says. “Except for him. He’s memorized it.”

“In three language,” Simmons elaborates. He’s proud of that fact, it’s rather impressive, he thinks, to memorize something completely at all, and even more so in more than one language. That’s mostly why he did it in the first place.

The soldier turns to the others. “Uh, what do you guys think?”

While the other soldiers deliberate, Grif lowers his voice to ask Simmons, “Is that a real rule?”

“I have no clue,” Simmons whispers back. “But they’ll either read the book or read the charges. Either way, we’re alive for a few more minutes.”

“Okay.” The soldier turns back around. “Yeah, we decided that sounds like too much trouble, so we’re just going to shoot you and say the Blues did it.”

Simmons groans. “Oh, wait. I didn’t think about the ‘fuck it we’re lazy’ option.”

“Night, I thought of it.” Grif shrugs. “I just didn’t wanna explain it. Fuck it.”

The soldier gives the signal. “Ready weapons!”

Shit. It looks like they’re actually going to die now. There’s so much left Simmons wanted to do with his life! He can’t die now, he’s still a Private! And he hasn’t yet earned the respect and admiration of all his peers! And he’s never told Grif… well. It’s now or never. Fuck it, right?

Simmons clears his throat. “Grif, this looks like it’s it. Listen, there’s something I always wanted to tell you.”

“I have something I wanna say to you too, buddy.”

Oh. Simmons wasn’t expecting that. But whatever it is, he wants to hear it. “You first.”

The soldier calls out to the others, “Ready!”

“It was me that stole your identity and ran up all those credit card charges at the pawn shops and peep shows,” Grif says. “Sorry.”

“Aim!” 

“Whew!” Grif’s voice lifts cheerfully, as if they aren’t just about to die. As if Simmons isn’t seething under his helmet about the hundreds of dollars Grif had just admitted to stealing from him — when he refused to go to the Vegas Quadrant, Simmons realizes. Fucking asshole. He doesn’t deserve to know... well. He obviously doesn’t care, if he’s going to steal Simmons’ identity and run off to the Vegas Quadrant just because Simmons wouldn’t go with him when they were on active duty. And then Grif says, “I feel so much better now that I got that off my chest! So what do you wanna say to me?”

“I seem to have forgotten,” Simmons says through gritted teeth, then raises his voice to address the soldier giving their execution orders. “Hey, asshole. Can we hurry this up?”

“Fire!”

And the air is filled with bullets.


	3. Chapter 3

They don’t die.

Sarge swoops in at the last second and saves them, accidentally Simmons would guess, and they leave with him, because it beats staying there to be executed.

Apparently someone named ‘Agent Washington’ of ‘Project Freelancer’ had come to Blood Gulch, and Sarge had got word that he was reassembling the Blues to mount an attack against them.

That’s not what happens. Turns out, Agent Washington is looking for anyone who knew anything about the Omega AI that Tex had. The one that jumped around between all their heads and made everyone super angry all the time. Apparently someone, or something, called the Meta is collecting AI and Agent Washington thinks the best way to catch them was… the Blues. 

Well, that just means he’s stupid as well as a dick. He tells them they’re all fake soldiers, that their outposts are used as practice to train real soldiers for combat in the real war. Which is not what they’re fighting. Apparently. It all sounds like bullshit to Simmons. Kind of. Except it doesn’t, now really. It actually makes a lot of sense. But he doesn’t want to think about it, and they end up going with the rules and Agent Washington anyway. They go after the Alpha, the original AI that was somehow made into fragments, or whatever.

And then they find out that Agent Washington thinks Church is actually the Alpha, which is ridiculous because Church is a ghost, and so what is there aren’t any other ghosts running around in a war where people die al the time. Who cares. It doesn’t matter anyway. 

Shit goes down and they run. They take the Epsilon unit, because apparently there are still more AI and this one is proof of all the crimes Project Freelancer committed and it’s important that they take it to the proper authorities.

But the proper authorities never come. 

They end up at Valhalla with new bases, the three of them in one and Caboose in the other. Red vs Blue again.

Caboose keeps to himself over in Blue Base, and Sarge keeps busy making battle plans to annihilate the Blues once and for all. 

Which means Grif and Simmons are back to spending nearly all their time together.

They’re sitting outside of the base one day, on the beach, looking out over the water and not really talking about anything, when Grif looks over at him and says, “So what were you gonna tell me?”

“Huh?” Simmons thinks he knows what Grif is talking about, but really it could be any number of things and Simmons doesn’t want it to seem like he’s been thinking about the firing squad about every ten minutes since it happened all those weeks ago. Because he hasn’t. For the most part. But so what if he does? It was traumatic. They almost died. Sure, they almost die more often than most people — they are soldiers in a war after all — but it still makes sense that he would think about it. A lot. It even makes sense that the almost dying isn’t the part he thinks about, most of the time. He thinks about almost dying some of the time, sure, but most of the time he thinks about how he almost told Grif — 

“Back when we thought we were gonna get executed. You were gonna say something,” Grif interrupts his spiralling train of thought.

“Oh, I uh… don’t remember.”

Grif snorts. “You don’t remember. You, Simmons, who held a grudge for five years because someone ate the last chocolate Pop-Tart.”

“It was you! The wrapper was in your room. Just because no one saw you eat it —”

“It was planted, Simmons! Falsified evidence. I was framed!”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“So what were you gonna tell me?” Grif is looking at him like he’s genuinely curious, his helmet and most of his upper body armour off and at his feet. Simmons can’t remember when they stopped wearing full armour around each other, maybe it was after his cyborg surgery, when it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar for both of them to be in full armour for an extended period of time, and Grif spent most of his time lounging around the base in sweats. Simmons had tried to follow the rules and not Grif’s example, but it was just so uncomfortable to have the weight of armour pressing down on his stitches and places where metal was now fused to his skin. He’d stopped wearing full armour around the base, and after a while they were both in civvies more often than armour, and no one ever said anything so they never stopped. It’s only ever a problem when Sarge catches them, and gives them a lecture on proper Red Team attire. Or when, like now, Grif is pulling his shirt over his head so that he can lie half-naked in the sun like a big dumb distracting — 

Simmons forces himself to look away, clearing his throat. “I was going to tell you that you’re annoying and it was all your dumb fault we got caught in the first place.”

Grif looks over at him, eyebrow raised. “Yeah? Why didn’t you?”

“Because those would be dumb last words to say. I didn’t want to waste my only last words on you.”

“And you thought better last words would be ‘hey asshole, hurry it up’?”

“Ugh, shut up, Grif.”

Grif sighs, and lies back with his hands behind his head. “I never thought I’d miss being your superior. Then I could order you to tell me.”

“I just told you!”

“Simmons.” Grif rolls his eyes. “You couldn’t lie to save your life.”

Simmons sputters. “I could too! I happen to be an excellent liar. And it wouldn’t matter if you still were a Sergeant anyway, I still wouldn’t tell you.”

Grif looks over at him suddenly, grinning, and oh no he fucked up. What did he say, he said something wrong — 

“Oh, yeah?” Grif says. “You’d disobey a direct order form a superior officer?”

“Of course not.”

“But Simmons,” Grif feigns sincerity, “you just said you would. So which is it?”

“Only if the superior officer was you, fatass. And you’re not even a Sergeant anymore, shut up.” Fuck. He fucked up. He fucked up and now Grif is looking at him with this stupid smug smile on his face and Simmons can feel his face start to heat up and he wonders why his helmet is on the floor between his feet and not on his head, because helmets are the best idea, especially when you’re someone who blushes easily like Simmons does.

But Grif just yawns and his eyes close as he says, “Remind me later that you still haven’t told me what you were gonna say, I’m gonna take a nap.”

And Simmons is left there staring at a shirtless, sleeping Grif.


	4. Chapter 4

So much shit happens.

They go rescue Tucker from the dessert. Church comes back in a floating eyeball that can shoot lasers. Washington and the Meta team up to come after them. They get into a big epic fight where Grif almost dies, but they win, and Washington joins Blue Team. They get new bases and it’s not even a month later when another Freelancer shows up — Agent Carolina — and drags them along on a missing to rescue Epsilon/Church again. Then on a mission to kill the director of Project Freelancer. They win awards and board a ship to go home, and the ship crashes on a planet in the middle of a civil war — a fake civil war — and it’s years later when the fighting is finally all over, they win the war and they can finally celebrate. They’re going to retire.

And then Tucker.

Tucker fucking activates an alien Temple of Procreation that makes the whole world horny to fuck each other. Because he’s Tucker and that’s how he parties, and he doesn’t stop to think that maybe some people don’t want that. That maybe some people, on Sarge’s orders, happened to be looking for a certain teammate and are locked in a storage closet when the Temple activates, and it’s all Tucker’s fault. All of it.

“Oh my God,” Simmons squeaks when he comes to his senses. 

He and Grif just stare at each other for a few seconds, neither of them saying anything until —

“Oh my God,” Simmons squeaks, and he can’t stop. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my GodohmyGodohmyGo —”

“Simmons,” Grif hisses. “Shut up.”

Simmons does. He shuts up and he stares at Grif and doesn’t say anything and Grif doesn’t say anything either.

“Grif!” Simmons whines when Grif continues to not say anything. “What did we — we just — what do we do?”

Grif stares at him. He just fucking keeps staring and Simmons can’t take it.

“Grif —”

“Nothing,” Grif says. “Nothing. We do nothing.”

“That’s your answer for everything.”

“Yeah, and it fucking works. Look. We do nothing. We say nothing. We never speak of this. To anyone. Ever.”

“Yeah,” Simmons says. “Yeah, okay, I can do that. Just. Nothing. We do nothing.”

Grif nods, shifting his weight away slightly and suddenly Simmons needs to be far away, very far away, why didn’t he realize this sooner, it’s weird that they’re still so close together — 

“Go sit in the corner,” Simmons snaps.

Grif glares at him. “What? No, you go sit in the corner.”

“I’m going to! The other corner. Let’s both go… sit in a corner. In different corners. Far away from each other. As far away as possible.”

“Oh… right. Yes. Fucking — why didn’t you say that before?!” Grif pushes himself up and practically falls back against the wall.

Simmons scrambles up after him and runs the three feet to his own corner. “What! Why would I have had to say it before, why didn’t you say anything!”

“It wasn’t my fault, I was in here first!”

“Yeah, because you were avoiding training, again!”

Grif grunts. “The war is over, why would we still need to train.”

“Because we’re still in the army! And that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“Dude. We never trained before we came to this stupid planet. And we barely trained on this stupid planet —”

Simmons crosses his arms over his chest and scowls. “You barely trained.”

“— So why the fuck would I volunteer to train now, when there’s no more war, and no more bad guys to fight. We’re retired.”

“I mean, technically — ”

Grif puts out a hand to stop him. “No Simmons, not technically. I’m retired. I’m done. No more. I earned this. I shouldn’t have to hide out in a storage closet — ”

“Exactly! If you weren’t hiding in a storage closet — ”

“You’re the one who kicked out the doorstop and got us locked in here! No one asked you to come look for me.”

“They did, actually, and I wouldn’t have had to if you weren’t hiding out in a GODDAMN STORAGE CLOSET!”

And that’s when the door swings open and there’s Donut, in full armour, looking at Grif and Simmons in… not full armour.

“Oh, heeeeeeey guys!” Donut says. “We were wondering where you were. You missed one heck of a to-do! What are you doing in a storage closet?”

“Nothing,” they say in unison. “Nothing.”


	5. Chapter 5

Grif quits.

They retire to this out of the way moon and for a while it’s good. It’s normal. Well, normal for them. It’s comfortable, all of them together, not fighting (except for Sarge), just existing. And then Dylan shows up with a message from Church — Alpha — saying he’s alive and he needs help. So of course they have to pack up and go with the Blues, because that’s what they do. Blue Team has Blue Team drama and Red Team comes along to fix it. Because that’s what they do.

But then Grif quits.

“I don’t like you.” 

His words should hurt Simmons, they say shit like that to each other all the time. Call each other names and… But this is different. The way Grif says it. Says it to everyone.

“I don’t like you. ANY of you. But we’ve known each other long enough, that you should hear it from me, first. I’m done.”

And he walks away.

He doesn’t look back when Sarge starts to follow after him, when Sarge threatens him, when Sarge tells him to turn around. He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t look back.

Simmons stands there as the others walk away, off to pack up for the trip, to get ready to leave to go save Church. Because he’s a member of Blue Team, and that means Blue Team is going to go save him. And because Blue Team is going, Sarge is going too — Can’t leave those pesky Blues alone to go off and get themselves killed. Not until we kill them first! — And if Sarge is going then so is the rest of Red Team, because that’s how Red Team works. 

But not this time.

Grif quits and Simmons isn’t sure how Red Team works anymore if Grif isn’t there for Sarge to bully, for Lopez to shoot and make snide comments at, for Donut to pester with innuendos so the rest of them don’t have to be subjected to that. Who are they going to all be annoyed at, if not Grif, for being lazy or disgusting or… If not Grif, who? Donut? Lopez? Simmons has a sick feeling it might be him. And if they all start making fun of him, how is he going to deal with that, if Grif isn’t there? Simmons doesn’t know how Red Team will work without Grif. Because Grif quit. Grif isn’t there. Grif has been a constant in Simmons’ life for so many years. And now Grif isn’t there and Simmons isn’t sure how Red Team, how he, how anything, is going to work.


	6. Chapter 6

Grif comes back. 

He gets captured right away, dumbass, but Simmons is so reliev- shocked to see him that he doesn’t really care. Tucker does, and that’s just not fair. It’s not fair that he’s blaming Grif for leaving when they’re the ones who left. 

Turns out, Grif came to rescue them with Locus of all people, and they all escape from the cells where the Blues and Reds had locked them up, find Wash and Carolina, and go on the offensive.

Grif and Simmons go with Dylan and Jax, because Dylan says she needs to get something and someone needs to escort her, and Simmons isn’t leaving Grif’s side for as long as he can help it. Not because he’s worried or anything, not because he missed Grif, just because… because. Because that’s who they are. They’re Grif and Simmons. Simmons and Grif. That’s what they do.

When they finally find themselves alone in a quiet moment, Simmons looks over at Grif. “You seemed so serious when you left,” he says.

Grif looks away from him, down at the floor. “I was a little heated.”

Simmons looks away too, but he doesn’t want to look not at Grif because what if he decides to leave again? So he looks back. “I thought you were gone for good.”

Grif turns back at his words. “Yeah, it was definitely the idea.”

Simmons can feel his heart beating in his throat. That was the idea. Grif was going to… he didn’t plan on coming back. He was going to leave and never come back, that had been the plan, and Simmons never would have seen him again. “What changed your mind?”

Grif looks away again. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

They’re both looking away and not saying anything, and Simmons didn’t think it would be this awkward. He figured Grif would just come back and Sarge would yell at him for leaving and Grif would make a snarky comment and everything would go back to normal. He hadn’t realized how just much he’d missed Grif, and how much Grif leaving had affected him, had affected their relationship — 

Grif’s voice pulls him“Tucker, Caboose, Sarge…”

Simmons looks over at him.

Grif meets his gaze. “Fucking Donut. Simmons, I hate those guys. I mean hate, but holy hell, does shit get boring without ‘em, and you know, I figured without me to beat up on, y’all were doomed to fall apart at the seams. I’m your hate glue.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re back,” Simmons tells him.

“It’s good to see you too.” Grif says.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“S’good to see you.”

“Yeah.”

And that’s when they notice that weird camera guy, Jax, creeping up between them. 

“Uh, dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Grif says.

Jax stops. “Don’t mind me. I’m just getting in position for the kiss.”

Grif and Simmons look at each other, and simultaneously spin to deck Jax in the head, knocking him the fuck out.

“Fucking ridiculous,” Grif says, turning away from the unconscious asshole cameraman.

“Right?”

“As if that would ever happen.”

Simmons rolls his eyes, letting his whole head go with the motion. “Exactly.”

“I mean, not in the middle of a fight with psycho doppelganger freaks who want to kill us all and destroy the world.”

“It would never work logistically with our armour in the way. We’re wearing helmets, it’s just not feasible.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Wait, what? Simmons looks over at Grif, and Grif is already looking at him. What the fuck did he just —

“What are you two doing,” Dylan asks, coming back over from the computer terminal.

“Nothing,” Simmons says.

“Nothing.”

Dylan looks over their shoulders at Jax lying on the floor. “What happened to him?”

Grif doesn’t miss a beat. “He slipped.”


	7. Chapter 7

It’s later, when they’re back on the moon, back in Red Base, sitting on the couch with their armour off that Simmons brings it up.

“Did you really not know which one was me?”

Grif looks over at him and the corner of his mouth twitches up before he looks back at the TV. “No, I knew. I just had to make sure. You did have the same armour and everything. But you’re right, he’s way more annoying than you ever were.”

Simmons nods enthusiastically. “That's what I said —”

“I mean, you’re plenty annoying.”

“What?!” 

“But that dude? Holy shit, I can’t believe none of you tried to kill him before you found out he was a bad guy.”

Simmons rolls his eyes. “At least he was clean.”

“Oh yeah?” Grif grins and peeks at Simmons out of the corner of his eyes. “Why don’t you go hang out with him, then.”

“Ugh, I’d rather shoot myself in the foot.”

“Exactly.”

Simmons lets that sit for a moment, tries to focus on the episode of Battlestar they’re rewatching for the zillionth time, but — “I’m just saying, you could be cleaner.”

Grif’s head flops back against the couch. “Really, Simmons?”

“Well, you could! I’ve seen how you keep your room, it’s disgusting!”

“I’m surprised you can anything with your lips glued to Sarge’s ass. How many years has it been?”

Simmons doesn’t answer right away, he stares out the window for a minute, and tries not to smile as he speaks. “I missed this.”

He looks over at Grif and… it looks like Grif is blushing? Grif blushes? Simmons is sure he’d never seen Grif blush before, he didn’t even think Grif was capable of blushing.

Grif picks at the edge of his thumbnail. “I missed you too. I… um. Well, I know I said back… you know, that I had something to tell you, and I did, I meant it, but I had something else to say too, so I’m just gonna say it now before I chicken out, cause if I don’t do it now it’s gonna be another fifteen years before I try to say anything, and who knows where we’re gonna be by then —”

“Together,” Simmons says. “I don’t know where we’ll be, but… you haven’t been able to get rid of us yet.”

“Almost did.”

“Yeah, but you came back.”

“Yeah, because… what I wanted to say was… Simmons…” Grif looks over at him and Simmons couldn’t look away is he wanted to. 

“Yeah?”

“I… Yeah.”

Simmons stares for a second, not sure if Grif is saying what he thinks he’s saying, but… Grif is staring at him so intensely and he nods when Simmons raises his eyebrows. “For how long?”

Grif shrugs a shoulder, an almost convincing attempt at his usual apathetic demeanour. “I dunno. It’s been a while, I guess. When did you?”

Simmons stutters. “When — when did I?”

“I mean, you do too… right?”

Simmons blinks. “I mean… I missed you. When you were… when we left. It sucked when you were gone, and not just because Red Team doesn’t work without you but because… I don’t. Without you… There’s no one to talk to. And it was… I was…”

“So… yes?”

Simmons’ eyes move from the bottom of the coffee table to the bottom of the TV, staring down at the floor but unable to stay in one place for more than a split second. When did he start staring at the floor?

“When?” Grif’s voice pulls his eyes up and he meets Grif’s gaze.

“I don’t… um. A while. Too. Probably.”

“Right. Yeah.”

They stare at each other for what feels like forever, neither of them moving, Simmons doesn’t even know if he’s still breathing, he can’t tell, he’s frozen, and Grif is frozen too so Simmons says, “We’re talking about the same thing right? Cause normally I would just assume we are, but like, what if we aren’t, and this is some big miscommunication, and our whole relationship has just been one big miscommunication and we don’t actually know each other as well as we think we do and — ”

And then Simmons shuts up because Grif is kissing him and thank fuck they had been talking about the same thing because it had been years, years, since Simmons had realized how he felt about Grif but it had never worked out, never been the right time, never seemed like a good idea to say anything. And now he doesn’t have to anymore because they both know and they both feel the same and Grif is back and he isn’t going to leave again, or if he does leave then Simmons will go with him. They’re going to retire, for real this time, here on the moon or somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where, but no more rescue missions. No more wars. 

Just them on the couch watching Battlestar out of armour.


End file.
